controlled no territory in Afghanistan. The other was that it pro-
vided a potential Afghan partner for international operations
against the Taliban. This was to prove crucial in October–
November 2001.
THE OBJECTIVES OF THE TALIBAN
The Taliban were above all an anti-modernist movement. Their
anti-modernist character suffused their approaches to policy, while
the fact that they were a movement rather than a Leninist party
gave a certain looseness to the implementation of decisions.
Negotiating with the Taliban, one observer reported, was like
‘grasping smoke’ (Keating, 1997: 11–12). The result was that some
international aid staff who interacted with particular Taliban on a
day-to-day basis found that they could strike pragmatic comprom-
ises with them to achieve particular objectives, while those who
had to deal with the Taliban over matters of principle found them
impossible. There were notable differences in the Taliban’s
approach to cities and to the countryside. They tended to see urban
centres such as Kabul as Cities of Sin, to be ruled with a strong
hand. Rural areas, especially populated by Pushtuns, were of less
interest to them. They felt more secure there, and perhaps as a
result, allowed the rhythm of rural life to go on largely uninter-
rupted.
The Taliban and security
The Taliban defended their approach to rule above all else in terms
ofsecurity. Mulla Afghani in February 1995 stated that the leader-
ship took the view that the ‘most important issue in the current
situation was security and the prevailing mayhem, in addition to
the absence of Islamic government’. He went on that ‘Our pro-
gramme is to continue jehad until weachieve security and stability,
until Islamic law is applied, and until Afghanistan becomes strong
internally and externally’, and that ‘We want a weapons-free
232 The Afghanistan Wars